Hardware
by Scancrasher
Summary: GLaDOS has plans for her wayward Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Written for portalkink. One-shot. GLaDOS/Wheatley. Explicit, additional details inside.


AN; This was originally posted for the portalkink kink meme. Please read the following warnings so you don't get squicked!

This contains: **GLaDOS being nasty, a spot of torture, dub-con, femdom, and sensory deprivation. ** So if any of these unsettle you, this fic might not be for you! If not, then enjoy!

-

She'd had _so many_ plans.

Getting him back down here hadn't been easy. It had taken her weeks to repair the necessary sectors of the laboratory alone, much less locate the little moron's exact orbit path and retrieve him from _space_. Luckily he had found an old Aperture satellite and latched onto it, along with one of the corrupt cores that had gotten sucked out into the black with him. That left only one unaccounted-for core, and GLaDOS was already working on a strategy to find and retrieve it. The thought of Aperture technology just drifting out there, unsecured, bothered her.

The satellite had nearly destroyed itself heeding her call, but somehow had managed to hold together. It was already being repaired and prepped for storage, and the yellow-irised corrupt core was being put in temporary storage until she decided what to do with it.

Wheatley would be dealt with first, though. There were so many things she could do to him to vent her frustrations. She could have downloaded him into a mechanical body with actual working limbs and made him run tests. She could have brought him back just to put him to work, giving him the most menial and demeaning of tasks. She could have simply hurt him until he was satisfied. She liked that last plan. It was simple, elegant.

When ATLAS finally trotted in, holding the quaking core, she'd noticed something that set the crueler cogs of her mind turning. Wheatley had suffered damage from his trip through the atmosphere; that was to be expected. However, all Aperture science equipment was manufactured to withstand ludicrously high degrees, and the satellite she'd called down had been equipped with a heat-shield. He was quite banged up and considerably scorched, but most noticeable of all, his iris had gone out. The formerly bright blue blaze was now a dead, dull gray with a series of fine spider-web cracks over the surface.

He had been blinded.

It was temporary, of course, and actually easily fixed. But it made GLaDOS wonder… "Do you know," she began, her voice low and even, not betraying a hint of the fury she felt at the sight of that little spherical waste of scrap metal, or the sadistic pleasure she was going to take in this, "where you are?"

Wheatley had jerked at the sound of her voice, and his shaking intensified. ATLAS looked rapidly between the bundle in his arms and his creator, holding Wheatley further away from his body. "Y-yes. I do now."

GLaDOS could feel satisfaction coil through every loop and angle in her body. The abject terror in his voice was absolutely exquisite. "Do you know why I brought you here?"

"Er…" the dead iris was darting back and forth frantically, even though Wheatley could see nothing. "To… hurt me?"

"Listen to you," she purred, "maybe I was wrong about you being a moron, after all." Wheatley's dead iris contracted sharply and he began to shake so badly that ATLAS's arms were shaking with him. The robot made an inarticulate noise of displeasure and tried to hold him still. "Set him down."

ATLAS did so and stepped back, watching GLaDOS uncertainly. She said nothing to her creation, and instead unfurled her body to bring her glowing yellow optic within inches of Wheatley's still-trembling form. His iris was still frantically moving back and forth, as if he sought to restore his lost visual functions by sheer desperation alone, or perhaps trying to predict which direction she'd approach him from.

GLaDOS let the silence linger. She preferred Wheatley like this-small, immobile, and utterly helpless. She moved forward ever-so-slightly, nudging his casing and causing him to rock backwards. Wheatley gave a sharp yelp. "GAH. I'M FALLING I'M-no. No, I'm not falling. Okay. I just-I rocked back a bit, didn't I?"

"Yes." GLaDOS drew herself back up towards the ceiling. He was still shaking, and that was good, but if she drew this out too much his fear would be replaced by boredom, and she didn't want that. Time to move things along. Just as she was about to begin, though, she was quite surprised to hear the little moron piping up of his own accord.

"Um, GLaDOS? Can I-can you give me a minute? I know you're about to. Er. Maybe kill me, and that's, well, that's unfortunate, but I need to say something before you do. It's kind of important. First, though, was she okay? Did she make it? I mean, she was out in space and all, it's not exactly a good place for a human-"

"No," GLaDOS interjected, "she died."

Wheatley fell silent and went utterly still. His iris stared blindly out in front of him. A few moments passed before he was able to speak, and when he did, his voice was uncharacteristically soft. "She… she died?"

"Yes. You killed her." GLaDOS watched his reaction (or, rather, lack of one) carefully. She had expected his fear to come rushing back, but instead he remained suspended in shock.

"I… I wanted to tell her that… but she's…" Wheatley fell silent.

"You're speechless. That's a rarity." GLaDOS regarded the sphere with amusement. She considered letting him go on believing that Chell was dead, but decided to tell him the truth instead. He seemed to be slipping into a state of numbness, and that was not what she wanted. "I was lying. She's alive. She left."

"Really? Are you-she really is alive? You're being serious?" Wheatley asked, his iris darting wildly about again.

"Yes."

"You _could_ be lying again…"

"I could, but I'm not. Why would I tell you a lie that obviously made you feel better?"

"I don't know. That's just the sort of backwards thing you'd do, I suppose." Wheatley's tone was almost conversational now. He was too stupid to even stay properly intimidated for long. It was disgraceful. "All part of some elaborate mind-game that you'd set up. Very _Machiavellian._"

"What did you want to tell her?"

"What?"

"What did you want to tell her?" GLaDOS decided to subtly remind him of the position he was in. A robotic arm extended from the floor and effortlessly plucked the sphere from where he had been resting on the ground. Wheatley jerked in his casing, startled, and began look feverishly back and forth again. When he did not immediately answer, she put a little pressure on his frame. "Well?"

"I-I wanted to tell her that I was sorry," Wheatley stuttered. "F-for everything. I just… I was wrong to turn on her like that, a-and to try and kill her. Also that I shouldn't have been so bossy and… and that I hope she could forgive me."

GLaDOS tilted her head slightly. Interesting. "I can't speak for her, but I'm going to have to reject your apology. You put me through too much to make up for it with _words_, you little moron."

"Uh, well, y'see." Wheatley began, "That's, that's the thing. I wasn't. Actually."

GLaDOS leaned in closer, and Wheatley began to tremble again, apparently able to sense her proximity without seeing her. He fell silent. "Finish it," GLaDOS commanded softly. "Finish what you were saying."

"I wasn't… apologizing. To you."

GLaDOS's response was to squeeze him then, hard enough that his damaged outer casing buckled and a spark of electricity arced harmlessly into the air. ATLAS leaped back, startled, but GLaDOS was too angry to acknowledge the presence of her creation. "Oh really? You apologize to the woman whom you've _slightly inconvenienced_-because, less face it, murder is nothing but an inconvenience to _her_- but you don't have anything to say to the person _you turned into a potato?"_

Wheatley's voice was a shrill, terrified babble, "I just-I didn't have anything prepared-I didn't expect to see you so soon, or, well, _ever,_ really, and I didn't think of what I would say if, if, if-"

"Shut up." There was a whirr of machinery all around Wheatley. The little sphere's iris continued to dart fruitlessly back and forth. His trembling's intensity doubled. "Just shut up for _once."_ Instantly the arms went to work, and Wheatley gave another yelp of alarm as he was manhandled and turned on his side. In a flurry of precise mechanical movements, parts of his casing were pried apart and back. "In your _miserable."_

Wheatley began screaming in earnest, because GLaDOS was ripping into him, pulling out fine wires and circuit-boards and replacing them in a seamless frenzy. "Pitiful excuse." New cables were run into his body. Solder was applied. The harsh smell of burnt rubber filled the air. "_For an existence."_

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Wheatley's iris-shutters had closed over his dark eye, a reflexive response to pain. His form was largely unchanged, except for two thick cables running out of one side of his little spherical body, and two new ports on the other. Slowly, he retracted his shutters and glanced blindly about. He said nothing, but he was clearly puzzling over the fact that he was not dead.

GLaDOS silently lifted him up. Using a few robotic limbs from the floor, she maneuvered him beneath her and seized his new cables. She plugged them into a pair of ports on her own chassis, and then used the arms to do the same to Wheatley, attaching two of her own cables to the ports he'd just been given. She retracted the cables, drawing him closer, but still supporting him with the robotic limbs from the floor.

Wheatley didn't have to see to know what he'd just been connected to. His iris widened. "Hey, what're you-AUUGH-"

"It's much easier for me to directly access your punishment/reward system than to actually toss you around the room like some kind of human plaything," GLaDOS droned nonchalantly. "Though the latter does have its own unique set of rewards."

"Arrgh-"

"And for a while I considered transferring your core to a potato, but I decided that would be unfair. After all, the potato hadn't done anything wrong. It was just doing what came naturally to it. There was no need to plague it with your presence."

"Stop, _stop_-"

"I also considered giving you a set of limbs and making you run tests, but I decided against it. I also thought to myself of all the tasks left to get this facility running, and how useful you might be running the most menial and repetitive of tasks I had to offer."

"Please, _please_ stop…" Wheatley's eye-shutters had closed again.

"But I decided against that, too, because I knew I couldn't trust you not to completely ruin any task I gave you." GLaDOS finally eased up, giving the little core a moment's respite from the pain. Aside from the fact that she wanted to have his full attention, the downside of this sort of direct interfacing was that she was getting irregular shocks of pain on her end, too. It was nothing she couldn't handle, but it was unpleasant, all the same. It was the only way she could deliver maximum sensation to him, though, and it was worth it if she knew he was getting double what she was feeling.

"So I asked myself, what should I do with little Wheatley? And I decided I'd just keep you here. With me."

He cracked his blinded iris open. "W-well," he replied weakly, "That's sort of… a nice sentiment…"

"And whenever anything went wrong, whenever I got frustrated, whenever I had a bad day and needed something to vent my frustrations on…" Wheatley's iris-shutters widened again and his pupil retracted sharply. "I would have _you."_ She punctuated this sentence with a particularly nasty jolt, and was rewarded with an involuntary cry. GLaDOS gritted her proverbial teeth against it, and fell silent, awaiting a reply.

It took Wheatley a moment to regain his wits. "A-are… are you sure you don't want to send me to do the menial tasks?" he asked weakly. "Because, you know, I have lots of experience with that sort of thing."

GLaDOS had not really been gunning for abject, humiliating submission-more like hopeless bleak despair, but she couldn't say she didn't like where this was going. "Lots of experience completely messing it up?" She asked, giving him a warning jolt.

"Ow! Look, it's really hard to concentrate when you do th-ow ow _owowow!_ Stop it!"

"No."

"Please!"

"_No."_ She reiterated, ratcheting up the intensity. He screamed again, and it was worth the feedback pain that pulsed in agonizingly white-hot lines through every wire and synapse of her body. She relented again. "I don't think I've gotten it through your thick little hull yet. You don't _tell_ me to do anything. I give the orders around here. Right?"

"R-right."

"When I tell you to do something or _not_ to do it, you obey without question. Maybe if I'm satisfied that I can keep your rampant stupidity in check, I'll actually let you leave this room and perform tasks for me, and that will be _a favor._ Understood?"

"Yes," was the meek response.

GLaDOS was enjoying this. Why hadn't she thought of this sort of thing before? It would have been fun breaking the little core of every last shred of hope he had left and leaving him resigned to a pitiful meaningless existence, but this willful subservience was much more satisfying. It only worked if she fed him one scrap of hope, though, gave him a light to strive for at the end of the tunnel. "If you're good, I'll hurt you less. If you're obedient, I'll reward you."

Might as well give him something. GLaDOS accessed the reward protocols and sent a short burst Wheatley's way-and, too late, remembered the feedback and jerked as a reciprocal jolt of pleasure shot through her. They gasped simultaneously, both of them quite caught off-guard.

A moment of awkward silence followed. ATLAS was still in the room, and was now watching curiously. Wheatley's cries had unnerved it, but it seemed willing to run the risk of more unannounced noise in the interest of finding on exactly what was happening here. This new development has its rapt attention.

"Er, okay," Wheatley replied softly. He tentatively blinked his eye-shutters. "Did you just-?"

"No questions." GLaDOS barked sharply. "You're to speak when you're spoken to."

"Okay." He immediately replied.

"Yes ma'am."

Wheatley blinked again. "Er, sorry?"

"Say, 'yes ma'am.'"

"Oh. Yes. Yes ma'am." The little sphere nodded.

GLaDOS figured it would be appropriate to reward such obedience. "Good," she said, and once again accessed the reward protocol, sending a substantial burst his way. It rebounded back on her, and her entire massive chassis shuddered with a simulated sigh. Wheatley, for his part, gave a light moan.

It had been a long time since GLaDOS had felt the flush of euphoria that had come from her first rounds of testing. She'd dealt with it, figuring there was no way to recapture the sensation. Besides, she didn't have time to mess with that sort of thing. She had science to get done. It had never occurred to her to try anything like this. She wasn't some sort of addict.

But now, after tasting it again, she was aware of how much she'd missed it, how hungry she'd gotten for that warm fluttering rush in her circuitry. Besides, it would make sense to let the little moron in on exactly what rewards she could give him, should she choose to. Intimidation was satisfying enough, but the thought of Wheatley willingly submitting to her, doing what she said because he wanted to, because she could make him love being her thrall… well, in a word: _yes._

In two: _Hell, yes._

"W-well," Wheatley went on, nervousness, obvious fear, and a hint of embarrassment evident in his voice. "I'm… I'm very glad we had this talk-"

"You know what? Shut up." GLaDOS decided, hitting Wheatley with a sizzling electric bolt of pleasure. The little core's blind iris shot back open, pupil wide. "Just shut… just… mmmn," Now it was rebounding back on her. Perfect.

And then, to her utter amazement, Wheatley did not, in fact, shut up. He did the very opposite of shutting up. He began to babble. "I just-I just don't-nhh, I don't know why you… why… I can't-_ohh,_ that's rather nice, actually, what you just did-argh!"

GLaDOS, in frustration, had momentarily switched protocols so that Wheatley was hit by a spark of pain before the pleasure-echoes even had time to leave his system. When the feedback hit her, she jerked, unprepared for the overwhelming effect of the mingled sensations. "Don't ruin this."

"What, exactly, is 'this?'" Wheatley demanded desperately. By way of answer, GLaDOS ratcheted up the intensity, and was rewarded with a low, appreciative groan. "Good enough," Wheatley gasped.

GLaDOS drew him closer, retracting the cables she had connected to him until he was flush against her. She curled as far sideways as she was able, pushing against the smaller sphere in a base need to impose herself upon him as physically as she had done mentally, to remind him of her size, of her power, to envelop him in the mass of rubberized cable and curves of steel that comprised her form.

"You're an idiot," she spat acidly, even as arched her long body, her mind humming pleasantly with a feedback of pure ecstasy.

"H-hey now-"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" She sent him another warning jolt of pain and jerked, once again struck by the sheer power of such a heady cocktail. GLaDOS was unable to keep herself utterly quiet, allowing a soft, wordless sound to escape her before she regained control.

But Wheatley had heard it. "Was that-was that _you?"_

Another jolt, another sharp cry from the sphere, and another delighted vocalization from the crazed supercomputer torturing him. There was something fantastic about the one-two punch of pleasure-pain. It was definitely worth looking into later, but she needed more of the former, and she needed it now. Wheatley would be feeling double the intensity of the sensations she was, so maybe her efforts would also render him incapable of rational speech.

It sounded like a good plan, anyway. GLaDOS didn't warn him. She just continued to feed him stimulus, abusing his reward protocols mercilessly. The blinded sphere's yelp of startled pleasure was very close to his reaction to unexpected pain. GLaDOS decided she liked that. As the feedback wave hit her with renewed intensity, she found herself unable to keep quiet, and, unwilling to let Wheatley hear her indulging herself, decided to try venting her pleasure with words instead.

"You," she snarled, "are… a worthless _moron._"

Wheatley's response was to shudder in his casing. "_Ohh."_

"You are nothing but a failed experiment, a sad little _mistake_. I should have had you thrown in… in the… _ahhh…"_

Wheatley's iris darted sideways in a reflexive attempt to see her, but, of course, to no avail. He had definitely heard her that time. _Oh, well,_ she decided, _Might as well enjoy this while it lasts._ GLaDOS let her reservations leave her, letting her words dissolve into a throaty moan that left her victim looking startled by the raw lust behind it. Obviously he was having trouble believing that cold, calculating, power-mad GLaDOS was making those noises.

"I," she breathed, "hate you." She increased the intensity and was rewarded with Wheatley yelping yet again. It was maddening how stupid he was. As if he expected her _not_ to do this to him again, as if he were _surprised_ at how the pleasure felt each time it hit him anew, the little empty-headed _moron,_ damn it was _turning her on_-"I hate you _so much."_

Wheatley was no longer able to string together anything even remotely resembling words at this point. He was, however, being quite loud about just how he felt about this current situation, which, if GLaDOS was any judge, was quite satisfied. He was helpless and terrified and being fucked out of his little electronic mind, and he _loved_ it.

She increased the intensity yet again, and this time she cried out as well, her voice joining his. On the floor, quite forgotten, ATLAS was staring at them, and the robot was looking significantly stunned by this development. The intensity continued to build, and GLaDOS continued to try and insult her victim, each word tangled in confused undertones of mingled hatred and blind lust, "Useless, _worthless_ little…"

There was a sudden spark and Wheatley gave a hollow gasping noise, his iris-shutters opening wide. His core was not designed to handle the amount of stimuli GLaDOS was sending his way, and for one panicked moment it utterly consumed him, blotting out his thoughts with a white rush of numb ecstasy. Then it rebounded, leaving him sagging in his casing, limp and drained of energy.

It rammed into GLaDOS, hitting her so hard she jolted against her ceiling-mounting and gave a startled cry. She was made of sterner stuff that Wheatley, but the sudden burst was too much for her to handle at once, and for the first time in her life she was seized by a blissful absence of thought, and nothing existed except this raw, hungry, all-consuming intoxication.

The it passed, and she went limp, her yellow optic flickering weakly at the sudden drain in power. For a moment she remained still as she attempted to regain control of all of her scrambled functions, and then, with effort, pulled herself up away from the floor. The tension returned to the cables and mechanized joints that comprised her body, and with great dignity, she said, "See?"

"Eh?" Wheatley, by contrast, did not sound dignified. He sounded dazed.

"Doing what I say has its own rewards." Yes, it was best to play this off like it had all gone according to plan.

"Oh. Yes. Right." The sphere replied, blinking his iris-shutter slowly.

GLaDOS didn't feel any congratulations were in order for outsmarting Wheatley, but she still felt accomplished for having… regained control of a situation. It was then that she remembered ATLAS, who was still staring up at her and looking more curious than embarrassed about what he'd just witnessed. "Return to the hub," she commanded sternly. ATLAS could not nod, but it bobbed in close approximation and turned, jogging off to reunite with P-body. Hmm. Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to let it watch that. The last thing GLaDOS needed was for her two test subjects to get distracted, especially by one another.

But she felt curiously relaxed, as if a tension she had been carrying for a long time had been released. Unsure why, she chalked it up to the wonders a little bit of sadomasochistic indulgence could do.

"Hey, d'you think… d'you think someone could fix my eye? Maybe? Because, I mean, it would be nice to see and all. You know. Once again. Especially if you do end up putting me to work. I'd probably make a mess of things otherwise." Wheatley asked, having unfortunately regained enough of his faculties to resume rambling like an idiot.

"You will likely," GLaDOS growled, "make a mess of things either way. But yes. I'll have it fixed." She paused. Her power reserves were regrouping admirably, and she supposed it wouldn't hurt to put off the next round of tests by a few more hours. "But first…"

"First wh-oh. Ohh. _That."_ Wheatley paused. "Well, er, if… if you say so."

"I do," GLaDOS replied and, with no small amount of satisfaction, began to ratchet up the intensity on Wheatley's reward protocol, adding, "you moron."


End file.
